Another Week

I haven't posted in a REALLY long time!  I feel my blogging withdrawls... okay maybe not but I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures to let everybody know that we are still in the learning mode.  I will be posting on my other blog http://www.jonesfam02.blogspot.com/ about Nattie's birthday and a few other things.  If you want to hop over there and check it out. 

We are learning about Jesus in school and the different things that He is.  We learned that Jesus is the Light Of The World so we made this "sun catcher".  It was supposed to be a lot different but I had the iron on too hot and the crayons went everywhere.... so we did crayon shavings in between two pieces of contact paper and that seemed to work just fine.  The girls still loved it.  What could've turned out to be a disaster turned out as a success.  Praise the Lord!

I was trying to figure out how to get the girls to learn calendars and I found this on Confessions of a Homeschooler's site.  If you go to the right her blog is linked from this blog.  I love it!  I ended up laminating it so all they have to do is erase the stuff, other than the numbers in the month, and write the new date in each day.  It's been great to teach ordinal numbers, how to write the extended date, addition, tens place and units place, how to write out numerals in word format and how a calendar looks.  Someday I will have them plan out their months and days so they get used to doing that as well, but we'll save that for a later time.



Nattie putting her capital letters in alphabetical order.

We were learning about air so we did an experiment where you fill a cup way full of water then you put a piece of cardboard on it and flip it upside down.  The pressure of the air on the outside of the cup kept the cardboard in place.  The girls were amazed.

When the cardboard was pulled away by force (Daddy) water came gushing out.

We are learning about Astronomy this year and the last couple weeks we've been learning about the sun.  Here is our makeshift balloon solar system.  The sun is first, which is not to size, but the other ones are close in size to the ratios of what they would look like next to each other.  Of course Saturn is the one with the rings, and even though Pluto's not a planet anymore I put it up there anyways because it's part of our song.  Maybe I should post a video of our song.  I'll see if I can find it.

Here is an overview of the week. Week to of Adventures in My Father's World. I'm not going to go over everything we did this week because some of it is just basic school stuff. I will go over some of the important stuff and some of the fun stuff.

This is my favorite picture of the week. Nattie had just woken up from a nap so she was super tired and super whiney so while I got dinner ready I asked her if she wouldn't mind snuggling with Mara for a minute. Mara and Nattie both agreed! So they sat and watched Bill Nye the Science Guy (from the library) on wind while I got dinner made. So sweet.
We learned about Columbus. After Alyssa's initial shock that he really wasn't the first person to be in America... in fact he never set foot in the United States... she really had a good time learning about him. Above are some of the books that we read this week about Columbus.

We learned about JESUS. The name of Jesus and that Jesus' birth was foretold in the Old Testament. They really loved looking at these verses and seeing that what was told in the Old Testament came true... although their faith hardly ever waivers so they knew that was the way it was anyways.

We moved the keyboard into the school room... SMART!! Why hadn't I thought of this before. They like it when people can hear them practice so they've been practicing a lot more.

Syssa practicing.

Some free time... I think this is one of the times I said was MANDATORY P.E. time. Sometimes a Mama just needs a small break!

Like I said before we learned about Columbus this week. We made tin foil boats and sailed them from Spain the New World. They really liked this activity.

Art was from I Can Do All Things, part of My Father's World curriculum. They are getting the hang of drawing okay. This is one of their favorite things to do but the lessons (as of right now) are so short I squeeze like 3 in at once and then I don't do it for a couple days.

Nattie got a two new sets of books called Now I'm Reading. She's already knocked out 5 of them so I may have to order more soon. This little girl (3 years old, will be 4 in August) is a reading machine!!

Some of the journals that the girls have been writing have blown me away. They are so awesome! This is Samara's journal. I asked her to write why the name of Jesus is so important to her. She has been fighting a stye on her eye all week (it got HUGE and now it's a lot better, still there but not close to what it was), so she drew a picture of God healing her stye on her eye. I love it!!!

This is Alyssa's joural with the same question.

I love the read aloud that is assigned. American Pioneers and Patriots. It's a book that is fiction but is a story about the life and time of the people back when people were coming to America. This week it was about a little boy and his sister and family and the boat ride and finally reaching America. It was really cool and since there were kids in the story (7 and 9 year old) the girls really paid a lot of attention.

I didn't put any of our Astronomy work on here so I'll just let you know that we are learning about what Astronomy is. The post right before this one goes over what I did to help them learn about space. Hopefully I will be able to do the same thing for the Bible lessons that we cover. Our History is on our wall in the form of a timeline... I didn't take a picture of that this week either. Oh well, all for another post I guess.

Some of My Purchases

Over the past maybe year I have purchased some things that I wanted to use while homeschooling. Since we knew that we were homeschooling quite a while ago but hadn't started yet I picked up a lot of stuff so that I would be prepared... (what is that anyways!). Here are some of the things that we used this week.

I got these Geoboards recently off of Amazon.com. I wanted something for Alyssa to be able to do at centers time that she could feel was something appropriate for her age. Although these are the younger ones (with only 25 pegs) it seemed to keep her occupied... as well as the other two. This is a picture of Samara our 5 (almost 6) year old.
I bought these books for a dollar a piece at Target throughout the last couple months. I'm hoping that they have more and more as the year goes on. They are perfect for a two day book for Syssa.

I got the front bins off of Orientaltrading.com. I thought they'd be nice to have for any workbooks and papers that the girls wanted to do during centers time, or any time throughout the day after they've finished their schoolwork. I kept the blue ones in the back for things that are odd shaped. This is where I keep their Brain Quest cards, flashcards, etc.

I also found these at Target in their dollar section. The space ones are perfect for this year. I ended up laminating them so that they will last a lot longer and so I could stick some of them on the wall for the girls to see. I have a picture of the space ones below. The other ones I can use next year if we stay on the same thought process we are now with using My Father's World again.

These are the stickers that go with the posters below. These pictures are semi-out of order. I got these from Oriental Trading as well and am loving them already.

I got these also off of Oriental Trading. I laminated the big cards to protect them so we could have them... well, hopefully forever. The posters have interesting facts on the back as well. There's a picture of each planet, the moon, the Milky Way, and the sun.

These are the posters that go with the stickers. As we go over each planet they will put the sticker on the chart. Not sure what we're going to do with the other stickers but I'm sure I can come up with something.

Okay this is our work wall... As you can see I have a lot of writing on my board today. I've been going over some space stuff with the girls and instead of looking in my book a million times a day I decided to write it on the board. Anyways you can see all the wonderful stuff I have on my board but the real reason I took this picture is to show you what I did with my space flash cards I got from Target. I laminated them and then stuck them to the wall. I love them already!! It's a great visual for the girls when we're talking about something to be able to point to it instead of just telling them to picture it in their minds.

I've accumulated and purchased way too much I'm sure but if I see a dollar buy or something on Oriental Trading that catches my eye... well, there's some things I just can NOT pass up!! Thank goodness I have a homeschooling budget!!

Things We Do At School

Here are some pictures of the things we do in school.

Writing words in Haitian Creole. Alyssa has learned 10 words this last couple weeks. I will be adding 10 more words for her this next week.

Samara with her daily to do list for her Self Activities.

Doing a math worksheet.

Nattie is so funny. This is Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. The word she's pointing at is ear. The a is small so she knows to skip over it. She does the e sound and then skips her finger over the a and says "that's a tricky one" then jumps to the r. It's too cute.

Nattie doing Math.

Nattie reading Bob Books.

Samara dancing to Praise and Worship music.

Alyssa dancing to Praise and Worship music.

Nattie dancing to Praise and Worship music.

Alyssa concentrating on her math work.

Classroom Tour

I have been working on this post for a couple of days. I didn't have all the pictures I wanted at first so I was going to post 2 or 3 posts but then decided to just do one post so I had to take the required pictures, and then blogger only allowed me to post one picture at a time. If you want to see any picture larger remember all you have to do is click on it and then hit the back button on your browser to come back to my blog. This post is mainly for friends and family that have asked about our classroom but hopefully somebody finds it helpful for their family as well.

When we decided we would homeschool we wondered what room to do it in. This room is right as you walk in the front door so I didn't think about it much, but we really didn't have a purpose for it. It's supposed to be a "formal" dining room and a computer area but I think it looks best as a school room. :-)

I took a picture of the area of room and then more detailed pictures of some of the stuff so you could see it up close too. Hopefully I get this posted tonight!

This is the main part of the school room. We do most of everything at their desks and on the white board.
This is my desk area.

That is the activity table, the reading couch, and my supply shelves I got at Sam's Club... I have to say that I really do LOVE them. The girls can use this table for after school fun or during school for their stations. They can only use their desks during school time. I find that they treat it more of school and not just play time when I do it that way.

These are there stations buckets. When they get done with their self work and Mommy is working with another kid on their Mommy and Me time then they go to stations and work. These have miscellanious things in them. I also will have 4 random stations that anybody can use set up at the table but these buckets are kid specific.

This is the book shelf that I just reorganized. Some of the books were so unorganized!

So this is supposed to be a nice hutch but I really don't have a lot of nice things and it's in the school area so I decided I could use it (since it wasn't being used for anything else) to store more school stuff in.

These colorful drawers are their cubbies. Their personal papers that they haven't finished or say they start a fun thing and don't get to finish it, this is where that goes. They get very cluttered very fast so we'll have to go through them more often this year. The drawer bins next to it are full of scrap paper, stuff that I need to cut out and laminate, and some other stuff, and the hangining file boxes next to them are for my ideas for crafts etc. I really need to go through them.

This is my desk. I love that I have my own desk because I can sit and do anything and everything that needs to be done and not have to worry about where I'm going to do it.

This is where I put library books and any other books that I might be putting in their book baskets.

File folder games are in the drawer bins and on the left is more ideas and worksheets on top. Each of the girls have worksheets from My Father's World and the like and that's what's in the bottom.

I just cleaned off these shelves that's why they look so bare. This is where I have my Bob Books and other learning books that didn't come with the curriculum but they are fun to learn with.

These are the shelves for the girls and the curriculum I am using for the year.

This is a close up of the bottome 3ish shelves from above. To the left top you have Alyssa's work, the top right you have Samara's and the bottom left you have Natalie's. So far this has been the easiest way I've found to keep stuff semi-organized.

This is where I store my Math-U-See stuff. Because it comes with videos and I opt to watch the video with each child it's just easier to have all the stuff in the room that we do it in. Actually in the hanging file bins to the right is everything I need for Mommy and Me time with each kid so I don't have to get up to get anything. I just set up the table in the morning, also purchased at Sam's and I love it we use it for more than just this, and pull out the boxes and we're ready to go.

This is Alyssa getting ready to do her math time with me. She's ready to start but Mama's always wanting to get pictures.

Tomorrow will finish the 2nd week of school... even though today and tomorrow are both light days, and the girls have done excellent! I can't wait to see how much they learn and grow this year. I've never been able to see them learn like they have these last 2 weeks so it's been a delight!! I Love My Kids.